Stationary

I'm gonna get on that train
And I'm gonna ride it
Wherever it takes me, I will go
All that matters is that
I get far away from here

Slippery

I keep seeing movement at the edges of my vision
Perhaps that movement is just the reflection
Of the movement of my mind
None of this is sustainable
Because all things change inevitably
And never has my identity felt more slippery
But I think, I think revelation is near

An Urgent Truth

My propensity for self deceit has always been adept
So how can I trust my feelings in the past
Or even the ones I have now
Who's to say that I'm not deceiving myself again
How long this time will I force myself to wait
When I can see the truth
That I am struggling in the same ways I always have
And I find myself wondering
Did the caterpillar yearn so hard as I
When they saw a butterfly gliding and unshy
Because I find myself obsessed with a fantasy
And opportunity for it to become reality
And now each day is filled with activity
Frantically trying to find my way out
Of this constrictive cocoon

How do you know?

My body, notoriously disloyal
But how could I possible return with an act of betrayal
And am I wrong for internalizing like this
Perhaps this is my ticket to long awaited freedom
I smile when I imagine myself differently
How long do I have to wait
Before I say this is more than a passing thought
I wake up thinking about it
Fall asleep thinking about it
Dream all night about it
So how do I know?
How do I know?
How do I know?
How do I know myself?

The Bat

Creature of the night
I like you cannot see the light
I am comfortable in this darkness
Eating morsels of my sins
Upside down in my own identity
I slept for so long and like you
I have awoken without a dawn
And flown into the darkness

No Tears Shampoo

I can't cry
Every time I get close
My face twists up into a grimace
Then a smile and relaxes
Though my chest tightens
And a solitary sob is clutched within my throat
Only released once
It has metamorphosed into laughter
For as long as I can remember
I've been this way
I remember being spanked
And my anguish escaped my body
As shrieking vowels of hysterical laughter
The authoritarian always felt
I was taunting them
And though I did not intend to mock
It felt like power
The only power I could hold above them
To laugh in the face of consequence
But my laughter rarely comes from
A place of true joy and mirth
And has mixed into a muddy brown
Of pain, fear, and ecstasy
That I smear on my life
To placate the emotional hunger
Of those around me
And though it has never failed to satisfy or provoke
It has always failed to convey my truth

By Design

Damned to the confines of our own choices and mistakes
Insisting the only way to know each other
Is to tear off our skins
And plunge our hands into one another
To touch their bones and hold their viscera
I can hear the low hum of voices
And the delicate tinkling of forks on plates
From the other room
We are left to imagine, to fill in the details
To eavesdrop and speculate about our own decisions
Omission by design, by spectral plane and dimension
What makes a person so afraid of change
When change is the essence of every reality
Except our own
Our own inability to leave behind the past
And to seize an unwritten future

Artificial Elements

Used to hate my braces
but embraced them for making me closer
to a cyborg, for helping me approach singularity
And I was ready yesterday
Ready to be unable to distinguish
between what parts of me are organic and what are artificial
I'm ready to leave this body and exist on another plane,
be it celestial or artificial

Try

Try me again
I dare you
To try me again

The Cull

A man takes a wife
She waits to be wed
Tell me how mad you are
When I grew strong
When I found a way to beat you at your own games
Tell me how you moved on
When I let you go
When I killed myself in order to be free
The world needed a weaker girl
Like the one I used to be
And I destroyed her in order to become my self
You witnessed a meaningless transformation
Because I had never changed
Your eyes deceived you as they watched me let go
Of your expectations and desires as I kept my own
I became my self, the self I had always been
That they sought to bury
In order to save a woman
Who never existed

Monstre

Raise your hand if you've got depression
And the meds aren't cutting it
So you've gotta cut yourself instead
Remember when you asked for creativity?
Beggars can't be choosers
So now you're your own worst enemy
Your most creative saboteur
Make yourself paranoid about good days
How long will they last and are they real?
Celebrate for just a moment
And berate yourself for eternity
When you inevitably fall again
Remind yourself of all your failures
And suggest to try again is hubris
I have become a master in self-deception
What do I want and who am I?
Unquestioned laws of self are suddenly
Up for debate like it's an election year
Trying to ruin my own life
For petty reasons like uncertainty
How do you evict a part of yourself
When you don't even know who you are
Has the monster inside become the majority?

I Know The Way

I've been to hell and back
Enough times to know the way by heart
I know the demons, now old friends
For me, they create assarts
I know very well the way to hell
And better yet, I know it back
And the next time I bring you with me
I'll never bring you back

Afraid of the Dark

Every night the sun sets
I am panicked by the shroud of darkness
Come to smother me while I sleep
Worried that this night
The sun will find trouble
And fail to promptly rise again

Risen

I planned your death a thousand times
How I would peel back your skin
And dig for an apology that is buried somewhere inside
Better lock me up, I think you knew
I am your danger as long as I live
Say you're too scared to act with love
But you didn't know fear until you saw me awake
In full understanding of your brutality
For years I never saw the light of day
And suddenly I was the sun
Risen to scorch your earth and feed a new life
You cut me at the base
And I bloomed with impunity despite this

Garden Wall

You had me twisted up like a vine hungry for light
I never realized you lead me in circles
Until I woke up one day and took account of my tendency to spiral
And I saw you had tied me to a trellis
You cut me and you cut my bloom
And still I bloomed in spite of this
But you never tended me beyond your convenience
So I scattered myself over the garden wall
To grow in some greener pastures
Or even between two slabs of concrete
Anywhere but in that wretched garden
And I escaped you again

Happy Pills

In the final hour, the medicine administered
Reduces my thoughts so sinister
Dampening my perceptions and depressive deceptions
Suffocating and smothering my creative conceptions
I find a familiar peace in the silence
Delivered by pill, a miracle of science,
And a dullness that has never failed
To leave me apathetic, a will to thrive foiled

Stuck

I want to go home and never return to this wicked world
But I am too weak to break the chains of my mortal coil
And too soft to free myself from pain by delegating it to others

Aphasia

There are no words in the English language that adequately express the turmoil of trauma or the emotional storms that fill its sails. My terror has always left my mouth as shrieks and giggles.

Grip

I'm slipping inside myself
I'm crawling under a blanket of desensitivity
Trying to discern reality through a wicked haze
Sometimes I feel myself come up for air
And I remember what clarity looks like
But my memory is short and soon I am under again

Birthday Bruja

On the anniversary of their birth
In the throes of consciousness

Safe Spaces

Why am I responsible
For finding a comfortable space
In a system that
Doesn't even think I exist

Intimate

This was supposed to be my sanctuary
It was built on fault lines and rotten wood
But it was mine and I called it home
But lately it has conspired to
Evict the soul inside of it
To empty itself of its life force
And crumble into ash
My body promised my soul at conception
"In sickness and in health,
Til death do us part"
I don't understand why it insists on
Choosing the soil in a grave over me
It is the most intimate betrayal

Get Out

You don't know what it's like to have someone you don't want inside of you
And to never be able to get all of them out of you

Exit

Can't tell if it's what I really want
Or if I'm just looking for justification
For my escape

In the Hole

Depression traps a bully inside your skull
And locks your heart outside the room
And begs your fingers to tear away
At the smallest pieces of yourself
In an effort to disappear into thin air unnoticed
It destabilizes all your values and plans
And dismantles your identities
Until there's nothing left of you
And I feel myself slip away

Honestly

I feel I have reached the end of my rope
And now I'm left unravelling the ends
To tie them together again
In a single long thread
To try to reach the finish line
And I'm running out of ends to tie

Boy Bye

I escaped you
And I'll dance at your funeral
Dressed in black
I'll be spinning widdershins
Undoing everything you ever did
I guarantee my memory will outlast yours
You won't be forgiven
But you will be forgotten

Cleave

Stooped down to examine the unconsidered
Moving through the open mouth of the rat
I saw my pain designed
I was spectator and architect
Dropped into the lake of restoration
Knowing full well an elixir will never satisfy
Beasts and demons of chronic debilitation
A disorder demanding transformation
I am its subject
Too broken to remember restitution
Don't know where the platform disembarks
When I am a member of myself
And I can't dissolute.

Memory Games

Five years trying to forget what you did to me

But I can't forget so I'm emptying myself 

Of your plentiful poisons instead

I'm just afraid not to feel anything

At all, even anger, when I'm done with this

When I left you, you told me, ironically,

You wanted to marry me

But honestly, I can't think of anything worse

Than being locked in your prison

Until death, probably mine, do we part 

I realized I would never 

Beat you at your own game

I realized, too, that I had already lost

So long before that moment

And I left you

And I will leave you again and again

Dropping memories of you like bread crumbs. 

Sorry It's Been A While

Sorry for not reaching out sooner
I was just scared that it would
Start a chain of events that would
Isolate me further
But I just isolated myself instead

Sorry for not reaching out sooner
I was just scared that it would
Remind you how long it's been
Since I last reached out
So I just isolated myself instead

Sorry for not reaching out sooner
I was just scared that I would
Say the wrong thing and
Make a fool of us both
So I just isolated myself instead

Sorry for not reaching out sooner
I was just scared that you would
Offer help with good intention
And I would be ungracious
But I just isolated myself instead

Sorry for not reaching out sooner
I was just scared that I would
Ask for help and you'd refuse
And I would feel rejected
So I just isolated myself instead

Sorry for not reaching out sooner
I was just scared that I would
Accept the love around me
And it wouldn't be enough
So I just isolated myself instead.

Love Neglected

Why did you teach me to hate my body?
You shamed me young
For looking older
While older men leered
At me for the same reason.
I learned to resent my body through shame.
Then you taught me to hate your body,
The body I would grow into
While telling me to enjoy the stares now
Because you don't get those anymore.
You implied that a fat body
Is a body absent of value.
You never taught me how to love.

Cut Me Down

Cut me down
Scream at me
Flecks of spit
Hit my face
As you flail
Your arms wildly
And shove an accusatory
Finger in my face
Just like my daddy used to
And I look up at you
With love in my eyes
And apologies on my lips

Hatchling

Surly, brooding
Don't touch me
New beginning

Warning

Why didn't you warn me?!
That they'd be cruel to people like us!
They got to me first
And now I hate us both.

I Thought I Knew

I thought I knew what love was
When you told me that
You're doing this for
My own good
I was misinformed

Drown

I'm too angry
Will I ever surface?

Beneath You

You put the anger in me
And now I am no longer meek
I can be a monster just like you

Dreaming

It no longer overwhelms me
I can hold it in my body
And let it consume me instead

Bake Your Own Cake

I've never been cake
Though people have told me that
Cake is their favorite.

My ingredients
Are as follows: rotten soils,
Bitter herbs and salt

Over Easy

Now I'm cracked again
And the illness has seeped in once more
And honestly I'm angry at you
Because you were the one who dropped me first
And you dropped me again most recently
I don't know why I let you hold me anymore
Perhaps it's because most times you don't drop me
And it's easy to forget you've been dropped
When someone's strong and gentle hands are clasped around your shell
It's hard to see the butter smeared on your fingers
Or to smell the toast in the toaster
Or the hot oil on the skillet
When you're safe inside your shell

For Landscapes

Sometimes it hurts to be with you
I can never be close enough to you
All I want is to be undivided
For my body to be indistinguishable from yours
To be buried in your soils
To be your soils
To be part of you
The way you are a part of me

Curly

I was raised
Indoctrinated in capitalism
Taught to measure my worth
By my rate of production
But never supplied with an abled body
I learned to play in pain
To normalize the broken parts of me
In order to survive in a society
With no space for the unproductive
Never supplied with an allistic mind
I struggled to shutter my thoughts
To focus on a single concept
Rather than a concept's singularity
When my intuition compelled
My interdisciplinary tendencies

Chronic

I am sick and the land is too.
My gut is my mouthpiece.
Perhaps I am the gut of the land,
And in turn, the mouthpiece.
I seek, always, to know the land
as I know myself.
We are one and the same,
undivided and whole,
simultaneously, broken and morbid.
I steward the land and the land stewards me.
I learn. I profess. I profess to learn.
I profess.  I learn.  I learn to profess.

Letters to an Ex-Lover Anthology: Unavoidable

Be sure that this prayer is inescapable

Understand that you messed with me
It's my turn to mess with you
You cannot avoid my craft

You will sit and listen quietly
You will consider and reflect
You will find strength to hold yourself culpable
You will find fortitude to apologize

Misfortune will forever dog your heels
Maleficence will bend you backwards
Misery will settle on your chest
And Death will always be near

You will not escape adversity
You will not escape tragedy
You will not escape tribulation and disappointment
You messed with a savage

I call on the energies of this earth
Hold him accountable
Teach him guilt and remorse
Bring him shame and dishonor

He shall not escape his crimes

Note to Self (Manifesting)

Never forget that you
Have the potential for infinite life
And the power to destroy all of it
You are the beginning and the end
You are the sun, moon and evening star
You are boundless energy in a system that seeks
To define the indefinable
You are Jewitch

Built Up

Life's been all over the place lately, showering me in glory and reward while also putting me through the ringer.  How very typical.  In any case, I haven't had much drive or time to write.  So here's three short freeform poems to tide you over until I'm back in May (hopefully sooner though).

Impeccably Poor Timing
I need to write.
Now is not the time.
I have studying to do.
Naturally, now is the best time to write.


Non-binary/Agender
More often a man
Less often a woman
Most often somewhere in between
Yet nowhere in particular


Genderfluid
So often striving for the unattainable
So often striving for something that
I won't even want by tomorrow afternoon
Yet will long desperately for the next morning

Forester

A forester's Bible in hand
I learn to mete and measure land.
Reading the good word
Statistical precision's always assured
Because sampling design and stochasticity
Are my foundation's chromaticity
Used to paint a plan for inventory
To record the forest in all its glory.
Cruising and traversing
The trees and I always conversing
Greeting trees with tape and recording
Always sampling enough to be rewarding
Then attributes and values are poured into excel
Regression and error are the stats I compel
To build tables and predictions
To tease out conviction from contradiction
And perhaps most importantly
To encourage forests' conservancy.

Can't Be Wrong

I'm so goddam stubborn
And I've wasted precious time
Loving others too much,
Too stubborn to let go
And learn when to quit,
Because concluding that
My love was wasted
Feels like a death sentence.
My stubbornness compels me
To prove that true love's kiss
Might be enough to convince Death
To let us love unparted and eternal.

Domus

Gentle insect in the lichen
What harmony have you known
Nestled amid the ancient rocks,
Brightly caroling the soft roots of ferns?
Would it be the summer bluebird
Who rustles and perturbs your verdant world?
What warm secrets has the forest shared
Whispering to the moss and springs?
Your seasons are colored by intuition,
Never knowing a disturbed thought.
Of the many nights you've pondered,
Observing the dynamic dusk,
You have never withered.
You've always risen
like the earthen columns you call home.

Lucus

Behold, as I leave the mountain
Singing stone songs and
murmuring with the berries
Knowing the moist secrets of the moss
And the chores and errands of the insects
Strolling, wandering, living
in the lichenous sanctuary
Shading seeds and me alike
Every season bucolic and vivid
I could climb till dusk
And never have left Eden

Creature Comforts

Each breath is a creature
One with personality
Secrets and character
Each breath betrays its host
Divulging their thoughts
And answers without letter
A laugh, a sigh, a snort of derision
Each unmechanical and organic
Each different, unlike the last
Each only present for a moment
Reveling in its own transient existence
The breath is the most honest
Creature of all creations

Wavering

I wouldn't need you
If I knew how to do it all
Perfectly from the start.
Cherish me in all my ways,
In each of my imperfections.
My inadequacy is your opportunity.

Topography

My eyes have transformed into actual beating hearts,
And now I can love the land threefold.

Aegreo

I was once told that
death does not wait for us
to figure out how to live.
But what can be done for
those of us who have stumbled?
Are we left with only a shift
in our own perspectives?
Will it be enough?

Bilingual

The stomach is the body's mind,
A second brain so to speak.
I'm certain it knows more than I do.
If only my primary brain and stomach
Were more fluent in each other's language,
I'm sure I would be better for it.

Note to Self (Missed Connections)

Maybe I'll find the other people like me
when I get to grad school.
Or who knows.
Maybe I'm one of a kind
and I shouldn't strain my eyes so hard
looking for my duplicate.

Venefica

The will of the Church
to oppress, to accuse, to enact
the auto-de-fé.
An apocalyptic witchcraft
exemplified by wild nature,
a cipher for the bedevilled enemy.
Opposition is not just destroying
the mythic structure.
The Church gave man
nature to despoil.
The difficulty is one eye on the laws,
hair raising pronouncements,
misanthropy, foolish attack.
We live in a disenchanted world.
Fear us, the power of the witch
will not be disarmed.
Witchcraft, malefica, is the strong face
we show to this world.
Fight poison with poison.

1/22/2016
Found poem constructed from a section of the first chapter in Apocalyptic Witchcraft by Peter Grey

1011100010110010000101

Those feelings when
You realize how completely
You are trapped in the binary.
You thought you'd escaped;
But all you did was wake up
from a dream within a dream.
You were never meant to be part of this,
And here you are, immersed completely, drowning
In a toxic way of thinking about reality
And your own transexistence.

Bursting

I feel like I am
Unable to contain all
the art inside me.

On Being Out

Coming out is like
Taking a deep breath after
an exhausting run.

A Radical Act

Don't you see?
To love nature is an act of self love;
She can love us better than we can.

Am I trans

If you are asking
I will just tell you right now
The answer is yes.